It tells the story of a young woman recruited by a friend to work
at a gleaming tech company called Circle, which is a hardware and
social networking company that bears a resemblance to Google,
Facebook, and Apple.

The woman, Mae, is marked as an outsider from the moment she
reveals her old laptop (after being given a new,
yet-to-be-released tablet):

“Now, I’m assuming you have your own tablet?”

“I do. Well, a laptop anyway.”

“Laptop. Wow. Can I see it?”

Mae pointed to it. “Now I feel like I should chuck it in the
trash.”

Brandon paled. “No, don’t do that! At least recycle it.”

A month into her time at Circle, Mae is called into a meeting to
discuss her tendency to clock out at 5 o'clock. Although she was
fulfilling all of her job responsibilities, she wasn't giving her
life to the company like they wanted. "This isn't what you
might call a clock-in, clock-out type of company," a supervisor
tells her.

[M]odern employment tactics create the illusion that our employer
is our friend. This fabrication empowers the employer while
denying the employed the right to vocalize and protest
dissatisfaction of their working conditions. “You’re not
going to stick around and help out? I thought we were a team? I
thought we were friends?”

Back to the excerpt, Mae's supervisors scold her for letting her
Participation Rank fall so low. Furthermore, they can't
understand why she isn't sharing more of her life on social
media:

Denise looked at Josiah with a stern kind of compassion,
then turned to Mae. “How often do you kayak?”

“Maybe once every few weeks?”

Josiah was looking intently at his tablet. “Mae, I’m looking at
your profile,” he said, “and I’m finding nothing about you and
kayaking. No smiles, no ratings, no posts, nothing. And now
you’re telling us you kayak once every few weeks?”

By not participating in Circle, Mae's supervisors tell her, she
is not only failing to join the Circle community but also failing
to document her experiences and observations in ways that would
be useful to the world as a whole.

Eggers's excerpt concludes with a company meeting straight out of
"1984,"
in which one of Circle's three CEOs introduces a tiny HD camera,
which the company plans to sell for $59, enabling mass
distribution and unprecedented live networked sharing:

Fifty live shots from all over the square filled the screen, and
the crowd erupted again. “Imagine the difference these would have
made when it mattered!” Bailey roared. Now he cleared the screen
again and stepped toward the audience. “Well, from now on, we’ll
be everywhere it matters. Let’s see the cameras in Damascus.
Khartoum. Pyongyang.” He went on, the screen filling with live
views from every authoritarian regime — and everywhere the
cameras were so small they went undetected.

“You know what I say, right? In situations like this, I agree
with The Hague, with human rights activists the world over. There
needs to be accountability. Tyrants can no longer hide. There
needs to be, and will be, access and documentation, and we need
to bear witness. And to this end, I insist that all that happens
must be known.”

The words appeared on the screen:

ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN.

Mae, by now apparently brainwashed, turns to her friend and
whispers: "All that happens will be known."